Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally
Artist: Harry Styles
Label: Columbia
As befits a global star with infinite possibilities at his fingertips, Harry Styles has been popping up in some of the world’s top glamour spots. He ran a marathon in Berlin, hurried to St Peter’s Square to witness the unveiling of the new pope and, a few months ago, rocked up at a Japanese restaurant in Naas – the biggest pop moment to hit north Co Kildare since Beyoncé supposedly dashed into a local forecourt in search of a bag of Tayto before headlining Oxegen.
In addition to roving all over, the one-time One Direction mainstay has been looking ever further afield for inspiration. Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally, his profoundly okayish fourth studio album, has been preceded by namechecks for the Gen X disco punks LCD Soundsystem and the top Manc miserabilist Vini Reilly, aka The Durutti Column – best known for furnishing the heartbreakingly beautiful opening guitar line to Morrissey’s 1988 song Suedehead.
He has also lifted a trick or three from David Bowie by upping sticks to Berlin to record the new LP (with his regular collaborator Kid Harpoon). Going to Berlin has been voguish among artists looking to shake things up since Bowie went to the frontline of the cold war in 1977 to record a trio of albums. Alas, Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally is very much David Bowie’s Lodger in this equation: it is well intentioned but with a hollow place where its soul should be, a riot of style that suffers from a lack of substance.
You have to credit Styles with convincing the world that he’s a Serious Artist – even when his music fails to live up to that idea. Judging, for example, by the reaction to Harry’s House, his 2022 album, one could easily have mistaken Styles for the second coming of Prince rather than a one-man Coldplay.
That’s no shade on Coldplay, and there’s nothing at all wrong with being the solo equivalent of Chris Martin with better hair and a wonkier faux-American accent, but it is striking how much more seriously everyone takes Styles.
That is surely down to his remarkable stage presence, which was on full display at the Brit Awards at the weekend, when he performed Aperture, his new album’s minimalist lead single and opening track, as if he were Bowie negotiating side one of Low when, in fact, the choreography was more suggestive of a sort of Teletubbies-go-goth.
In addition to being its strongest track, Aperture sets the tone for the LP, which lifts the bloke-crying-at-the-disco template of LCD Soundsystem and re-ups it into playlist-friendly pop. Here and elsewhere Styles has to be credited for his ambition – he’s genuinely trying to push forward creatively – even if the results often end up more honourable pastiche than profound artistic statement.
He borrows some of the melancholic musings of the cyberpunk pianist James Blake on American Girls, a gauzy synth number that culminates in an annoyingly vacuous chorus (“My friends are in love with American girls”). The clock is wound even further back on the muscular electronica of Ready, Steady, Go!, which lands like Styles’ tribute to the much-maligned electroclash movement of the early 2000s.
Who knew he had a special place in his heart for Miss Kittin & the Hacker and TokTok vs Soffy O – yet here is incontrovertible evidence.
[ Harry Styles proves the art of a great album title is not deadOpens in new window ]
Given the soft treatment Styles has received from critics, he’s the last person who should have a chip on his shoulder about his reviews. Yet there’s a whiff of vinegar to the hard-hitting disco onslaught Are You Listening Yet?, which feels like a better-made version of Dizzy, Olly Alexander’s UK Eurovision entry; the words of Styles’ title are his song’s accusatory hook.
The album was produced largely in 2025, so came together in the aftermath of the death of his One Direction bandmate Liam Payne, in October 2024. But he resists doing something so obvious as paying tribute to his former colleague, and the record seems largely concerned with the bittersweet euphoria of the dance floor.
There occasional moments of self-reflection. The jangling guitar ballad Paint by Numbers finds Styles wrestling with big questions and coming to the conclusion that things are messy – “watching the colours run …it’s a little bit complicated” – before the record heads back to the dance floor for the retro electro of Carla’s Song.
What’s remarkable about Styles is that he seems so charismatic on stage, or when out and about, but that this aura does not translate to his music. He’s a well-intentioned playlist icon who comes across as quietly vexed by his own shallowness – a mumbler on the dance floor who has ambitions to be a credible pop star but just can’t dig deep to produce a work of genuine substance or staying power.
Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally is released on Friday, March 6th
